For justice to be seen to be done requires that the public and media have access to court and access to the material underpinning public proceedings. Open justice in the modern age means more than merely a right to pass through the court doors.

The underlying principle is that a public authority’s objective should not be to win the case at all costs, but to assist the court in its role of ensuring the lawfulness of the decision under challenge, with a view to upholding the rule of law and improving standards in public administration

The number and diversity of public law cases is now such that a review of the year can only hope to cover a small sample of these. The selection of cases below (from September 2016 to August 2017) necessarily reflects our personal choices, and no doubt, there are many others that could have been included. We have each picked three cases. They are summarised below in chronological order, with some detail.

This paper of regulatory case summaries accompanied the 2017 seminar, which was an update on the application of judicial review principles to the regulators across a range of commercial sectors, and focuses on recent cases and also particular trends.

The UK Government’s use of remotely-piloted armed Reaper drones to conduct lethal strikes abroad, without placing the operator at risk of injury or capture, has given rise to considerable concerns of legality, transparency and accountability. Armed drones are not prohibited weapons under international law. However, drone strikes raise serious legal issues, which differ depending on the circumstances in which strikes are carried out.

There are essentially two ways in which a person may challenge the sufficiency of inquest proceedings or a decision by a coroner not to hold an inquest at all. The first and most obvious is by way of judicial review proceedings. The second is by way of a s13 application under the Coroners Act 1988.This paper will briefly consider the law and procedure pertaining to applications to the Attorney-General for a fiat and applications to the High Court pursuant to s13 of the Coroners Act 1988.

This paper considers some of the obligations and powers under which the State comes to investigate deaths, incidents of serious harm and abuse, and other forms of wrongdoing. These obligations and powers can, in limited circumstances, be used in judicial review proceedings to challenge decisions of Government and other public authorities on whether to conduct an investigation, and, if so, what form of investigation is required

On 11 October 2016 the IPB passed the report stage, which leaves only the third reading before royal assent. It is likely to become law in January 2017. The Bill is an unprecedented legislative assault on privacy. Although it is welcome in that it seeks to regulate what the authorities have been doing anyway without any formal legal basis, it contains incredibly far-reaching powers with insufficient oversight.

The introduction of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (“DoLS”) to the MCA 2005 on 1 April 2009 imposed a statutory responsibility on local authorities to oversee and operate a scheme to lawfully deprive the liberty of adults who lack the capacity to consent to arrangements made for their care or treatment in either hospitals or care home in their own best interests.